You have a meeting about a service you have never opened

Who this is for

• Engineering managers who just inherited systems somebody else built.
• Consultants and contractors joining a codebase this week.
• Anyone with a meeting in twenty minutes about a service they have never opened.

The problem

• The readme describes a system from eighteen months ago.
• The architecture note mentions a queue the code no longer uses.
• The file that matters most is the one nobody wrote a comment in.
• What earns you credibility in the room is not in any single input.

What it does about it

• One page, thirteen fields: filled as you read, so nothing gets drafted twice.
• Cross-reads incidents against commits: did a fix ship, did it hold, and who did the fixing.
• Finds the single point of failure: when one name is on every incident fix, you have found the person to ask.
• Ranks damage before likelihood: a rare failure that loses money outranks a weekly one that recovers.
• Hands you three questions: each traceable to a line you actually read.

Two minutes to first output

1. Get the log with real dates and paths: git log --date=short --name-only -50
2. Paste the pack, the readme, the entry points, the log and the alert config.
3. Read the ownership field and the cross-read first.

What it will not do

• Produce the main path from a route table alone. It marks that field inferred.
• Line up relative commit dates against an incident. It states which readings they permit.
• Assume an incident with no commit after it was never fixed. It checks your log window first.